Cryptosmith

I’ve been living with a computer-age annoyance: my Tivo crashes about once a day. This has been going on for a while now, which shows how little TV I’ve been watching since the writers’ strike and its resolution.

I’ve scanned the Internet for discussions of Tivo crashing and, surprisingly, it’s not a topic that gets discussed much. In fact, the only explanation I’ve seen people put forth is that it’s caused by hardware failures.

Now, I’ve had my Tivo for almost four years. To convert this to computer terms, I’ve been running a dedicated computer with its hard drive continuously for about four years and (surprise, surprise) it’s finally started to fail. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Continue Reading »

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Bruce Schneier blogged on an interesting development: Israel Implementing IFF System for Commercial Aircraft.

No doubt operators will mistype PINs, and ground controllers will prompt them for corrections.

I’ll also be interested to see if the “duress signal” actually works in practice. In theory, the flight crew can type in either a “good” PIN which generates a “We’re OK” signal, or a “duress” PIN which signals “We’re hijacked.”

What happens if a ground controller sees a duress signal? Will the controller demand verbal confirmation? Will that increase risks to the flight crew? If so, then the flight crew isn’t going to use the duress signal. Continue Reading »

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